Lakers guard Kobe Bryant may need to get healthy quick to prove the Lakers are still a landing spot. / Robert Hanashiro, USA TODAY

by Sam Amick, USA TODAY Sports

by Sam Amick, USA TODAY Sports

'Tis the season for the NBA guessing game, where the projections and what-ifs from the media are as much a part of the pre-pre-season discussion as those final camp invites among the teams that are finalizing their rosters.

The question of how watchable the Lakers will be is indisputably tied to the question of how Kobe Bryant is recovering from his April Achilles tendon tear, and that bit of theater will always be worth watching because of the ripple effect it will have on the vaunted free agency summer of 2014. He's 35 years old as of Aug. 28 and has logged more regular season minutes all time than all but 13 NBA players (45,390) and another 8,641 in 220 playoff games.

He will be playing catch up all year considering he is expected to miss the entire preseason and will no longer be sharing the floor with big man Dwight Howard, who most of us thought would spend his days helping keep Bryant in title contention in Los Angeles. In other words, that healed Achilles will have to endure one torturous uphill climb.

If he's a few more steps slow and not worthy of consideration as a starring member of another superteam, then it would stand to reason that - assuming Bryant re-signs with the Lakers as expected - the notion of LeBron James opting out of his Miami Heat deal and joining him in Los Angeles seems far-fetched. So Kobe's play, you could say, should be monitored closely by Heat fans as they decide whether or not to be concerned about James leaving town next summer.

Carmelo Anthony, the Knicks' star who would seem to be a prime candidate to join Bryant if he was looking for a new challenge outside of New York, already downplayed the idea that he might exercise his early termination option and skip town when he told Bloomberg recently, "I'm not going anywhere." If Kobe finally shows signs of slowing down as the 2013-14 season comes to a close, the already-slim odds of Anthony changing his mind would be even less.

The leading option among the younger generation would have been Indiana Pacers forward Paul George, but he told The Indianapolis Star this week that a long-term extension will be signed with the Pacers before the deadline for such deals comes on Oct. 31. And if Bryant ends the season looking nothing like the future Hall of Famer we've seen for so long now, none of that will have mattered to begin with and Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak may have the toughest of times convincing top-tier talent to come his way.

But if the one and only Metta World Peace is going to weigh in on this matter as he did on Wednesday, the former Lakers small forward now with the New York Knicks telling news reporters, "I think the Lakers are going to go to the NBA Finals," then it's worth getting a few other second opinions on the matter from folks in the league who aren't as prone to making outlandish statements just for the sheer fun of it: general managers.

GMs aren't doctors, but they do know a bit about matters such as these. These particular gents spoke on the condition of anonymity because they're not authorized to speak about other team's players.

There was no consensus among the six I polled, but it should come as no surprise that some of the front office heads that have spent years hoping he would give into Father Time aren't about to deem his game dead just yet. Among the answers received from general managers to the question of whether Kobe would return to his 2012-13 form at any point this season‚?¶

"Hard to bet against him," one Eastern Conference general manager wrote via text message.

"I think so. Kobe is Kobe," wrote another from the East.

"My guess is he comes back stronger than ever," said another from the East.

"He'll still be Kobe, but it might take a month or two into the season for him to get back to a similar level. I would never bet against him...He'll probably still play at almost the same level," a Western Conference front-office head surmised.

There was, however, a healthy dose of justified skepticism too‚?¶

"I wouldn't bet against him, but the odds and the history of others suffering the same injury in their 30s are against him," said a Western Conference GM.

"Even without the injury, he will be on a normal aging curve where he unlikely returns to previous levels," said another from the West.

So it's a mixed bag, enough so that I decided to keep the sample size small. But as one of the general managers who I inquired of reminded me, the fans and news media have a pretty consistent track record of being bad at this prediction game.

Preseason perception doesn't always lead to reality, no matter how rock-solid some of our summations seem at the moment. The last Lakers season, the one that started with Howard and Steve Nash on the Sports Illustrated cover with the headline "This is going to be fun," was as good a cautionary tale on that front as any. That could still be the case here, unlikely though it may seem.

One of the trappings of being a longtime sportswriter is that you're sometimes a sucker for the narrative, so I'll be the first to admit that that is coming into play: the idea of seeing Kobe and Pau Gasol's revenge on the basketball world that sometimes forgets how good they were while winning back to back titles in 2009 and 2010 is extremely interesting, even if their version of vengeance is a playoff berth and a fighting chance in the first round.

Gasol showed last season that he has as much pride as ever, the 33-year-old Spaniard fighting for his starting spot during those bouts with coach Mike D'Antoni and eventually showing for long stretches that he's not done yet. And while he is also coming off surgery, his particular procedure (which included stem cell therapy) was aimed at upgrading the knees that had become a chronic problem and shouldn't preclude him from starting the season fully healthy. Steve Nash will have a Take Two on his Lakers experience, having suffered through injuries for so much of last season and no doubt eager to do some damage before his 40th birthday comes in February.

One way or another, whether the Lakers are the us-against-the-world team that defies all odds or the train wreck that leaves Laker Land in flames, they will still demand our attention. You don't need to be a doctor to know that much.